Pity the Advertising Standards Complaints Board. Get a load of these complaints, all from its latest summary of decisions:

The word “shitty” in a Burger Fuel poster was “offensive and socially irresponsible”.

A newspaper ad for Waikato draught beer with the tagline “for a hardcase thirst” was said to contain “an unduly masculine theme”.

A Land Transport NZ TV ad alerting us to the usefulness of air bags “could cause people, whose cars do not have side airbags, to be anxious about driving.”

A radio ad for personal loans should have “warned people against borrowing money”.

A KMart pamphlet depicting men and women in underwear in city street setting “promoted indecency in public places”.

A TV ad showed four red-headed men emerging from a limousine and being acclaimed by a crowd to the tag line “Refreshingly ginger. New Frank Ginger Beer.” The complainant thought it was “degrading to people with auburn/red hair” and might cause red-headed children to be teased at school.

Another Frank Ginger beer ad depicted a mother giving birth to a red-headed child. The complainant said this was insensitive to women who suffered trauma during childbirth.

Let me give you the whole summary of this one:

Television

The advertisement for Kiwibank is set in a deserted warehouse. Two “crooks” have captured a woman and tied her to a chair. The woman is part of “the resistance” movement to overseas takeovers. She said, “…we were everywhere in places you couldn’t even pronounce.” One of two men who were part of the invading force stood beneath a yellow road sign pointing to Whakatane and pronounced it “Waka tane” in an Australian accent.

The Complainantsaid the advertiser had denigrated the history of the place name “Whakatane” by encouraging its deliberate mispronunciation.

Code of Ethics, Rule 5

In the Chairman’s view, the message was unmistakable and obvious hyperbole. In addition, it was not the place name that was being ridiculed, it was the two men, one of whom could not correctly pronounce “Whakatane”. The ‘joke’ was on them. Accordingly, the Chairman concluded that the advertisement failed to effect a breach of Rule 5 of the Code of Ethics.

Good lord there’s a lot of people with far too much time on their hands, it seems. I thought we used to get some crackpot complaints when I was in talkback radio (I recall one particularly lengthy and pompous one complaining I’d denigrated the Royal Family over a remark I’d made about corgis. I realise there’s a fair bitof inbreeding in that particular lineage but I didn’t think it had gone that far).